Entrepreneurs

Floating on a cushion of pot smoke in 1970, entrepreneur Michael Matthews was told by his wife that he needed a goal in life. Matthews, then 28, had already accomplished a bit. He had founded an electric-guitar-effects company, and it was expanding rapidly.

Though stoned, Matthews liked to think big. So he picked a worthy target: to defeat death. He made a plan to double sales at Electro-Harmonix annually until he hit $1 billion. Then he would fund an immortality think tank.

Amazingly, Matthews followed through on the sales plan, and for years it actually worked. But the think tank was never born. Ironically, this same plan would also ruin him several times: Instead of becoming immortal, he simply became an entrepreneur who refused to die.